Short Story: My Dad's Lullaby

Short Story: My Dad's Lullaby

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“A bonnie wee baba, a bonnie wee bairn.” He sang it over and over while gently rocking my baby sister in his arms at various times of the night.

My Dad was born and brought up in Motherwell yet we only thought of him as Scottish when he started to sing. He said the night shift was his and although he had worked all day, all be it in an office, he took over from my Mother once she had cooked his dinner. He would pace the floor with his arms cupped around the blanketed baby and sing her to sleep.

He had come down from Scotland to join the RAF at the beginning of WW11. Based in Blackpool he met my Mother, a nurse, in the Tower Ballroom and they were soon married and settled in Blackpool.

With the years his accent seemed to disappear except on the phone when we thought we had dialled the wrong number.

When I was about 25yrs old my cousin James was being ordained a Catholic Priest up in Scotland and all the family were very proud. We, the “English Rellies”, hired a mini-bus to take us all up to Airdrie where Dad’s brother Jimmy and his wife and children would put us up.

My younger brother and I did the driving with his young wife screaming in my ear every time she thought the mini-bus too big to get through. She was right in the multi-storey car park where we took the ariel off.

However we made it and our generous relatives fed us and slept on put-u-up beds and li-los so we could all have a bed. There were eight of us with my Mum and Dad and they were a family of nine, yet never once did we feel anything except welcoming Scottish hospitality.

We watched the Bishop ordain my cousin in a church full of family and friends and I remember feeling jealous that all these cousins knew each other and were able to meet up while we were the strangers in the midst of all these lovely people.

The best part was the party afterwards (I think it was in the town hall) when my Dad and his brothers got up to sing. We thought it was going to be “The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond” or “You Canee Shove Your Granny off a Bus”. We knew very few Scottish songs. Instead they sang “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “Galway Bay” and numerous Irish songs.

Years later when compiling the family tree I realized their Grandfather had come over from County Clare and these were probably the lullabies sung to their Dad by his Dad.